East Ozark Reptiles - Larry Hastings

This company offered Leucistic Baird's Rat Snakes for sale @ $40 each. I had never heard of leucy Baird's. Anyone else ever heard of them ? Several people contacted the company inquiring about these. Well known names were dropped like Applegate and the owner - Larry Hastings - is adamnet that the breeder is "well known" and reliable. Yet at this point he will not reply to requests for additional info or to sell them. I should also say that Hastings insists these are "PURE" leucy Baird's. Requests for the name of the breeder have been ignored also. Hastings cried to KS and my inquiry was pulled. Hopefully some light can be shed on these very new and rare morphs. I have contacted a number of "well known" herpers in Texas and they had never heard of this. The company has not replied to any of my contacts regarding these snakes. Feedback ??? I'm not interested in a fight here - just honest info.....are there any known records of PURE leucy Baird's ?

Is there a link To the ad or a website link?

Ive worked with bairdi for 5 years and have never heard of a leucy.I have seen some pics of what people were calling albinos but I'm not really sure that's what they are.Great looking snakes.As for a leucy bairdi just popping up out of nowhere for $40 .Well I'm not going for it.Smells like a hybrid.

Here's the link: http://eastozarkreptile.com/Leucistic%20Baird's%20rats.htm

The text reads "Leucistic Baird's Rat Snakes - - $75 each

The guy who bred these bred an albino male Baird's that he purchased from Brian Barcheck in 2001 to a normal female Baird's that he purchased from Evan Stahl that same year.

He bred those two together and got het. albinos.

He kept back and bred a het. female from that hatch back to the original albino male a few years later and got 4 leucistic babies in that clutch.

He kept all 4 leucistic babies and bred them to each other producing a pure leucistic strain of Baird's Rat Snakes.

he was at the Tinley Park show this year and he sold a bunch of them."

Let's see..........

Albino X Normal = HETS

Albino X HET = Albinos & HETS

We know leucy's are genetic and the trait passes just like in albinos.

So how do you get 4 leucy's from a pair that did not show the trait to begin with. AND if they were pure - why are they only $75 when they are also the ONLY ones on earth EVER PRODUCED !????

FALSE ADVERTISING !!!

THERE ARE NO PURE LEUCISTIC BAIRD'S RAT SNAKES ON THIS PLANET.

WHO is the breeder that sold them at the Tinley show ?

Leucy or not that sounds like a bunch of inbreeding and possible genetic problems down the line to me. From my understandings it isnt safe to breed siblings genetic wise?

Nagini - With reptiles, breeding siblings is fairly common, especially to refine a particular trait. Even then, yes there are risks of increased genetic problems as a result, but when you have very few snakes that have the genes for one trait, breeding them together is usually the first step in producing more snakes with the same traits. So, inbreeding isn't really the issue. When you see the term "line breeding", it's just a nicer term for inbreeding to refine a certain trait.

The big question here is that it seems like the breeder is trying to say that albino snakes breeding somehow resulted in a leucistic trait, which doesn't seem likely. Leucistic and albino are two different traits... right? To get 4 leucistic babies from a het X albino doesn't seem right. Even if the leucistic gene was recessive and not visible in either the original albino or the het female, to have 4 babies in one clutch show the leucistic recessive trait is awfully lucky.

But - I also know nothing about Baird's.

For leucys to have EVER been produced by this breeding, both the albino male and the "normal" female would have had to be het leucy. And then it would have shown up in the first breeding. The FACT that Larry Hastings has REFUSED any further response to this issue and he will not come here and answer, I think we can all deduce that this is a HOAX. THERE ARE NO LEUCY BAIRD'S RAT SNAKES !!!

Larry Hastings has re-listed these "leucy" bairds on his own site - East Ozark Reptiles as pure bairdi and jacked the price to a whopping $75 each. This idiot is clearly either a scam or just really stupid about what he has, or thinks he has. Pure leucy bairdi would be hundreds of dollars - NOT $75 !

WHO is the breeder ?

Has anyone informed Larry of this thread and asked for a response?